How to Do a Category Analysis to Bring Online Products Into Physical Retail
So you’ve decided you want to graduate from selling an Amazon product and build a real, durable brand—one that could eventually scale into a $100M+ business. This is the dream for many founders, and a realistic one as it has been done time and time again.
By now, you should already know that the best path forward is going omnichannel. Relying solely on Amazon or DTC eventually leads to margin compression, rising CAC, and platform dependency. On those platforms, you are a market taker, not a market maker. Your only hedge is channel diversity and scale. Physical retail offers distribution leverage, brand credibility, and more predictable demand. 80% of all retail transactions still take place in stores. Why miss out on all that revenue?
But once you decide to take your products from Amazon or Shopify into brick-and-mortar retail, the real questions begin:
Are you competitive in the category? Do you have a real edge, or are you just better at performance marketing?
How should your products be priced in retail? Should you promote, and how does that align with your ecommerce?
Should you sell singles, bundles, or multipacks? Or a new product altogether?
Which retailers make sense for your brand—and which do not? How do you know?
If you’re new to retail, this can feel overwhelming. Fortunately, retail market analysis is not complicated—it’s just methodical. It requires time, attention to detail, and discipline, but not overly advanced analytics or insider access.
This guide walks through a practical, repeatable methodology for analyzing a retail category so you can confidently position your product, price it correctly, and present a compelling case to retail buyers. The same framework works for independent retail, mass retail, or a hybrid go-to-market strategy (which is often the smartest approach).
Step 1: Getting Started With Retailer Selection
Your first job is to define where your product belongs. You may want to sell it everywhere, but can be a bad strategy sometimes. Some retailer placements make others harder, and some have a negative impact on your brand. You need to focus on fit, not just scale.
Start by identifying retailers that naturally align with your category, price point, and customer profile. Think of your natural associations of where you think you would go to buy your product.
Start With the Obvious National and Regional Chains
For most categories, the major retailers should be easy to name:
Category leaders (e.g., Dick’s Sporting Goods or REI for outdoor)
Broad mass retailers that carry your category (Target, Walmart, Home Depot, etc.)
Club stores like Costco or Sam’s Club if your product could support their pricing, pack sizes, and margins
You do not need dozens of retailers. Four to six well-chosen stores are usually enough to understand the competitive landscape.
Don’t Skip Independent Retail
Equally important: visit independent and specialty stores. They might all be different insight, but they tend to be highly categorically aligned.
They often carry niche brands that haven’t made it to mass retail yet; their merchandising tends to be more experimental and trend-driven
They have by far the fastest sales cycles, which means you can watch for trends easily
You may be able to speak directly with an owner or manager who actually buys product
These insights are often not available in big-box environments, though your learnings can be valuable in any context.
Step 2: Data Collection — Getting Into Stores and Taking Pictures
Once you’ve identified your target retailers, it’s time to do the real work: in-store research.
Go to the section where your product would live and document everything. This means writing things down and taking lots of pictures.
What to Photograph
For every relevant competitor product, capture:
Clear photos of the product on shelf
Shelf tags and price labels (make sure they’re legible)
Close-ups of packaging details, claims, and materials
Wider shots of the full aisle or section for context
Why shelf tags matter:
Products get moved, sold down, or temporarily displaced. Shelf tags tell you what the buyer intended to be in the assortment, which is critical for understanding planograms (POG) and category logic. Make notes of disorganization, but track the POG specifically.
Be thorough. This is not a quick walk-through—it’s the foundation of your analysis.
Step 3: Data Processing — Turning Photos Into Usable Information
This is the least glamorous part of the process, but it’s the foundation of your analysis, so take it seriously.
You now need to transcribe everything into a structured spreadsheet. Double check data with the online offerings or stores or the brand’s own data on things like materials or ingredients.
How to Organize Your Data
Create one spreadsheet
Use separate tabs for each retailer
Keep identical column headers across all tabs so you can compare data cleanly
Core Data Fields to Capture
At a minimum, include:
Product description
Brand name
In-store price
Online price (if different)
UPC
SKU
Store item number
Color
Size / dimensions
Weight
Primary materials
Quantity per pack
Number of facings
Planogram or category location
Available online? (yes/no)
Key claims or callouts
Amazon price (if applicable)
Amazon rating and review count
Country of manufacture
Use retailer websites to verify unclear details and fill in gaps. Add category-specific fields where relevant (e.g., grams of protein, thread count, decibel rating, etc.). And, of course, ignore any irrelevant fields.
This spreadsheet becomes a long-term asset. Save it, and update it annually as assortments change. Tracking changes over the long term is just as important as the initial research.
Step 4: Analysis — What You’re Actually Looking For
You are looking for patterns. Where does your unique product offer fit in all this? Fit can mean a number of things, but basic pivot tables, filters, and simple charts will surface most insights you need. Remember that stores try to appeal to different buyer types— often with a “good, better, best” assortment.
Pay particular attention to:
Pricing Patterns
Are there clear price bands? Do you see a good, better, best option?
Are there major gaps between entry-level and premium products?
Is pricing compressed or widely spread? Are the differences in prices similar between tiers or are there big jumps?
Pack Size & Format
Are most products singles, bundles, or multi-packs? This tells you how buyers believe their customers consume those products. Maybe your eCommerce data tells a different story…
Are case packs consistent or all over the map? Maybe the buyer is experimenting or serving different consumer demands.
Do stores favor convenience or value sizing? If both, how extreme are the differences?
Positioning & Claims
What benefits are emphasized repeatedly? Are they vague or legally backed?
What is the differentiation: Quality, sustainability, performance, or aesthetics?
Are there strong claims online that are missing in stores? What kind of certifications are on the packaging?
Merchandising Signals
Which products get the most facings? Which ones are in the upper middle shelves (the highest velocity area)?
Are certain colors or styles over-represented? Why might this be?
Are popular online SKUs absent from retail? Are there practical reasons for this?
These insights tell you where buyers believe value exists—and where opportunity may be hiding.
Step 5: How to Use This Data
Now that you can see the whole picture, use your analysis to define a coherent retail product strategy:
Maybe your online bestseller fits retail perfectly
Maybe retail needs a simplified SKU
Maybe pricing or packaging needs to change entirely
Maybe a consumer trend has not trickled down into retail yet and you can be the first mover to introduce your format
What matters is that your proposal is data-driven. When you walk into a buyer meeting and can say:
“Here’s how your category is currently merchandised, here are the pricing tiers, and here’ the gap our product fills…”
“We have XYZ understanding of the market from our online sales and our store reviews— here is what the data shows…”
—you immediately separate yourself from 90% of brands pitching purely on their own merits in a vacuum.
Note: Bring the data with you to the meeting. Review it with the buyer. Use it to justify pricing, pack size, and assortment decisions. Buyers respect brands that understand their category as well as they do, and if you teach them something they don’t know, you instantly make yourself valuable.
Final Thoughts
Retail market analysis is not optional if you want to scale beyond eCommerce. It is the difference between guessing and having an actual strategy. The upside is that as it teaches you how to merchandising, it simultaneously teaches you how to pitch your products.
Done correctly, it allows you to:
Choose the right retailers
Price products confidently
Design SKUs buyers actually want
Present a compelling, defensible retail strategy
This process takes time—but it dramatically increases your odds of success.
Need help with research? We can help.
Or reach out to me directly at Michael@CrossStratinc.com